Tricks, Treats, and Trees

Lectionary 31 + October 30, 2022 + Seminarian Justin Carlson

My mom loved holidays, and she especially loved halloween. We would brainstorm costume ideas months in advance so she could assemble the materials and help us create unique costumes, always adaptable so jackets could fit underneath. It was Minnesota after all, and a little halloween snow wasn’t going to stop us from looking our best while we trick-or-treated!

Through choosing a costume and disguising my everyday self, I could let normally hidden parts of myself shine. Gandalf the Grey, an ethereal ghost, Dracula - there was just something about a long robe and flowing cape I couldn't get enough of. Flamboyance, extravagance - that much smaller me would be so proud his bigger self gets to wear an alb and cope today! To appear before you as a Lutheran Preacher despite remaining a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It’s perhaps fitting that I am here before you at the end of October, with Jesus trick-or-treating in Jericho at the wicked man’s haunted house as my text.

Just imagine Halloween in Roman times: how many would choose to dress up as a chief tax collector? After all, tax collectors were unscrupulous, greedy, profiting at the expense of their fellow citizens - and chief tax collectors were the worst.

The weekend before halloween, we’d go to a patch and collect the biggest pumpkins we could find. Then, my brother, sisters, and I would carve off the top, scoop out the insides, and engage in an extremely important ritual: ceremonial pumpkin-gut-throwing. We’d pull fake cobwebs across the bushes, suspend a huge ghost by the entry, stick our jack-o-lanterns in the window, and climb a tree - not a sycamore tree, but a tree - to perch a few plastic skeletons gazing down at passersby. This was all to say: here is a house ready for trick-or-treaters, a house for hospitality.

The night of halloween, we’d eat dinner, change into our costumes, grab our plastic pumpkin candy buckets, and embark.

While my dad went with me and my siblings to visit other houses in the neighborhood, my mom stayed home to receive visitors. My dad would usually lead us past our own house at least twice in the night, ringing the doorbell and surprising my mom. Whenever we came back, she’d give us the tally of trick-or-treaters and report any good costumes.

Not even the 1991 Halloween blizzard stopped us completely, though my dad had to carry me in my tiny dino suit and we only went to our immediate neighbors.

Halloween was the one time of year when I saw into my neighbors’ houses. If there was any decor outside, we’d ring the doorbell and someone would come to the door. Sometimes it was someone I knew, sometimes it was someone new. Some houses were clean, others cluttered, and as years passed we learned to recognize them: oh this is the house where the elderly woman gives out quarters. This is the house where they give bible tracts with the candy. This is the house where they’ll ask us for a joke. This is the house with four giant dogs and one tiny one. Through this yearly practice of hospitality and encounter, we learned about our neighbors and learned to trust them at other times of the year.

I wonder what Jesus saw in Zacchaeus’ house, how he knew to trust him.

Here’s one thing I love about today’s text: the crowd assumes Zacchaeus is an evildoer. We as readers are meant to assume zacchaeus is an evildoer: not just a tax collector, but a chief tax collector! A chief tax collector who … climbed a tree? Who was so inspired to see Jesus that he climbed a tree?

Here’s something I don’t love about most translations of this text. At the end, when Zacchaeus finally speaks: “I will give.” “I will pay back.” - this translation makes us think that Zacchaeus has not been doing these things, but in the Greek, these verbs are present tense, not future! "I give! "I pay back!" Zacchaeus has already been doing these things, even if the crowd thinks he hasn’t, even if as listeners we are surprised to hear this. Perhaps Zacchaeus has already been quietly engaged in the work of reparation. Perhaps Zacchaeus has already been praying for a place where grace is found. He is named a sinner by the community because of his position, not because of his actions. His salvation does not come through a magical change of heart. No, Zaccheaus’s salvation comes because the crowd finally sees him as he already is.

My older brother, Derek, and I didn't really get along as kids. We shared a small bedroom and he was too cool and acerbic and I was too young and too sensitive for his humor. When I was in high school and he moved back home from college and we still shared a small bedroom, little annoyances built up into conflicts and arguments and fights and hurts and then we couldn't see each other anymore. All I saw when I looked at Derek was the idea of a vicious big brother and all he saw was a little brother who looked on him with disdain. When I left for college I was so happy to have time away from him.

Our mom died the year I graduated from college and our dad started working nights. When that first Halloween came around, Derek and I realized we were the only ones who could be at the house to hand out candy. We got together Halloween afternoon, grabbed pumpkins from the supermarket, pulled fake cobwebs across the bushes, suspended the huge ghost by the entry, stuck our jack-o-lanterns in the window, and climbed a tree - not a sycamore tree, but a tree - to hang some skeletons.

We spent the evening together having pumpkin beer, talking, watching movies, and waiting on the doorbell! For the next few years, even when we lived in separate apartments, it became tradition that we’d go back to our family home for Halloween to be there for the trick-or-treaters and be brothers. Making our house a place of hospitality helped my brother and I see each other as who we already were, to extend each other enough grace for honesty.

Tomorrow is Halloween, a day of visiting and giving. I’ve been told it is also Reformation Day, a day of Grace, one apparently important for the Lutherans. Jesus calls us to be honest: about ourselves and about how we understand each other, whatever costumes we happen to be wearing.

In giving and receiving hospitality we can find grace: in the exchange is the opportunity for grace. Sometimes we need the opportunity to give. We need someone to ask. Sometimes we need to ask. These next few weeks are a time of generosity at Holy Trinity. May they also be a time of grace and honesty.

Zaccheaus decorated a tree with himself. His neighbors saw the chief tax collector.

Jesus, passing through, saw Zacchaeus.